assassination
Americannoun
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assassinations
plural
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the premeditated act of killing someone suddenly or secretively, especially a prominent person.
The meticulous way in which the journalist's assassination was carried out has led to suspicions that his killers were professionals working for state security.
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the act of destroying or harming treacherously and viciously.
They went after me with everything they had, engaging in character assassination and in destroying my reputation—a complete fabrication and frame-up.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of assassination
Explanation
An assassination is the murder of a public figure. Assassinations are usually politically motivated. If someone kills your dog, that’s not an assassination, that’s just murder (unless your dog was running for mayor). A murder is the unjust, illegal killing of someone. An assassination is a type of murder in which the victim is someone well known, usually in the world of politics. The killings of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinations: their purpose was to destabilize the government and hurt the civil rights movement, respectively. As assassination is murder plus politics.
Vocabulary lists containing assassination
American History I
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March Vocabulary Words
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World War I
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Forced into hiding under police protection—the British security services identified at least six assassination plots against him—Mr. Rushdie decided years later to live a normal life, and so he did.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
Her shocking assassination prompted widespread public outrage and protests on the streets of Malta at the time.
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
Sheinbaum has since faced questions about why her administration allowed the pilot out of the country while they claimed to be investigating the events surrounding Zambada’s capture, including the assassination of a prominent Sinaloan politician.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 21, 2026
The operation was reportedly prompted by an Iranian assassination threat.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
The family discussed the assassination with Booth, speculating on why the murderer did it.
From "Chasing Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson
Vietnam, inner-city riots, and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had cast a pall over the Day-Glo optimism of the Love Generation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
Over the course of the war, Israel has claimed responsibility for the assassinations of several Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, widely regarded as a mastermind of the October 7 attack.
From Barron's ● May 16, 2026
Unlike so many retellings of famous assassinations, attempted or otherwise, Harron’s movie gets to the heart of its subject’s discontent without dwelling on dramatizations of Solanas’ fragile psyche.
From Salon ● Apr. 29, 2026
Presidential assassinations have been spawning conspiracy theories since Lincoln.
From Slate ● Apr. 28, 2026
In 1969 it became clear to us that he was living in 1968, because he kept shaking his head over the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
